Settle Down with Me
by Regency
Summary: Post-EoR. Mark doesn't have any use for dancing unless it's Bridget he's dancing with, and Bridget could dance with Mark all night. This is their engagement party with all their family and friends, but they've only got eyes for each other. It may be the best night of their life together so far, but the best is yet to come.


Author: Regency

Title: Settle Down with Me

Pairing: Mark Darcy/Bridget Jones

Warnings: None

Rating: Everyone, basically

Summary: Mark doesn't have any use for dancing unless it's Bridget he's dancing with, and Bridget could dance with Mark all night. This is their engagement party with all their family and friends, but they've only got eyes for each other. It may be the best night of their life together so far, but the best is yet to come.

Prompt: So how about some good old UST with Bridget and Mark slow dancing (that could end with the tension being resolved even if it's just with a kiss if you want ;) )

Author's Notes: Come flail with me on Tumblr at sententiousandbellicose. You can prompt me things!

Disclaimer: I don't own any characters recognizable as being from any incarnation of the Bridget Jones series. They are the property of their actors, producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun. The title is from Ed Sheeran's song, _Kiss Me._

* * *

Shazza nudges Bridget. "Your dearly beloved to-be has his eyes on you."

Bridget tries to very coolly look around the little party to spot Mark. It's another of those semi-awkward gatherings of his and her social groups plus assembled families, and they got separated almost as soon as they arrived. This is their engagement party, but they haven't been in the same three-yard radius since they got here and it's beginning making Bridget antsy. What's the point of snapping up the top human rights barrister if she can't hold on to him?

"Other way, Bridge."

Bridget sweeps her eyes in the instructed direction and finds Mark at once, encamped with the other sober-faced barristers at the drinks trolley. They are surely discussing very serious, world-affecting topics, matters of life and death and the like, but from how steadily Mark is looking at her, she would think he had only a passing interest in such things.

She is tempted to go over and snog her very handsome boyfriend fiance future husband, because his expression says _I love you very much_ very loudly in an almost incomprehensible wordless language she will henceforth call Marklish. She loves him just as much. Isn't that lucky?

Just as she thinks he's about to make his way to her _finally_ , Mark's mother summons him and he represses a mild, irritated grimace to tend to her. Bridget is called by Tom to meet his new beau and goes like the good friend she is. _Friends very important; Mark Darcy will still be on sidelines being very handsome later on._

"Forgive her, Sean," Tom reassures his new love. "Bridget has caught a premature case of married smugness."

"Have not!"

"Have you looked at anything, nay _anyone_ , else since you got here?" he asks obviously rhetorically.

"I have so!" When she couldn't see Mark, she's looked at other things. There are enough people at their party to occupy her. Not entirely, to be fair; she's kept half an eye out for Mark most of the night , but she isn't a complete social cur. Mostly. "All right, so I'm a bit preoccupied."

"Give over, Tom," Jude cuts in, judiciously. "She got one of the cute ones. Let her be a little smug."

"I'm not smug. Just very satisfied."

"Oh, I bet you are, Bridget," opines Shaz in a sing-song voice. "Don't think I didn't notice you walking a little bit funny when you two first got here."

"I…" _Shit_! "I twisted my ankle?"

"I _think_ that's an old euphemism for unexpected pregnancy. Unless you have something you'd like to tell us."

"No! _No._ Not yet. Not right now."

Her three best friends regard her shrewdly. There is no chance she'll get away without explaining the omnishambles of their last breakup now. She'd left out some of the more shameful details to preserve her own dignity, but that's done with. They made a mess of it, then. They'll do better this time. She'll do better.

Thus assured, she nimbly shifts the focus of their clutch to Tom's new beau and then to Mark's friend who's caught Jude's notice. _Yes, we've all noticed her curious gazing. Don't be silly._ Giles is gazing back with the same questioning look in his eye. There may be more engaged smugness in the air before too long.

A bottle of wine later, Mark appears at her elbow from wherever he'd been whisked away to by his shockingly gregarious mother. He makes his polite excuses to her friends and turns to her. "Might I have this dance?"

There's a dance floor of a sort in the middle of the room and the music is low but probably something someone could dance to if they were very determined. Mark is being his usual very determined self, which does a _lot_ for Bridget, come to think of it.

She lets him lead her to the floor and slips into his arms without thinking about it. She's been dying to put her arms around him since they got here. He kisses her hair in usual restrained but adoring Darcy fashion. She enjoys when he goes kissy on her. _Very very kissable future husband I have. Some women, such as self, have all the luck._

"I didn't know you danced." He's ducked the activity at any party they've attended together. If she didn't know better she'd assume her staid barrister had two left feet.

"I don't actually. I'm an appalling dancer."

"Oh?" They're swaying quite rhythmically under his lead for him to be that poor a dancer.

"Well, not appalling. An uneasy one, I should say. I don't enjoy being the center of attention."

"Then you might have gone into the wrong line of work." _And fallen for the wrong woman_ , which she categorically refuses to speak aloud. _Positive thought vibes, Bridge._

"I can't argue with you," he agrees, hands squeezing companionably at her waist. "I suppose I decided the ends are worth the means. If I get to do good for somebody else, a little unwanted attention is worth the trouble."

"Aren't you softhearted?"

"I've been told I'm something of a bleeding heart, actually," he bemoans, bottom lip poked out rather disagreeably. And adorably. _What a handsome spoilsport._

"There are worst things you could be."

"So there are." He pulls her closer till their swaying is little more than a shuffle that gives him a good excuse for a cuddle. Bridget gleefully obliges. Mark Darcy, public cuddler, wonders will never cease.

 _I'm going to marry you,_ she thinks, awed and stunned to have found somebody that looks at her like Mark looks at her. Her dreams weren't fanciful imaginings of a hopeless romantic, they were simply the low bar for her expectations. Mark tops the charts. _I'm going to marry you, and I can't wait._

Mark expresses in Bridget-readable Marklish, _Neither can I._ She suddenly wishes they were back at hers so that she could appropriately express her elation at nabbing a fine barrister who very regularly enjoys bestowing fantastic shags upon his fiancee. _Top humans rights attorney and top Bridget shagger. Singularly accomplished man. Have done exceptionally well choosing husband. Not even mum can find reason to complain._

 _…Might have a bit of engagement smugness._

"Is this even dance music?" Mark interrupts her very glowing thoughts of naked Marks in her bed. _Multiple Marks. Definitely a fantasy to remember._

"Anything's dance music if you dance to it."

"I suppose." He shrugs and guides her around the modest dance floor as other couples begin to join them. Apparently, theirs was the first dance of the party. "I liked it more when I didn't have to share the floor with them."

"I thought you hated dancing, anyway. Why'd you ask me to dance if you hate it so much?" She deftly follows his lead until they come to a less populated area of the floor and can return to their loving shuffle.

He seems surprised she asked. Mark is far more mysterious than he thinks he is, Marklish translations notwithstanding.

"Because doing something I don't like is just tolerable if I get to do it with you."

Which, her heart might be giving a little wiggle of bottomless love over that one, but other parts of Bridget quail. Mark's had his heart broken by a wife before; why would he choose her of all singletons to risk it on again?

"Is that why you proposed to me? After…you know."

"Well." He clears his throat in discomfort and sets his gaze off over her shoulder. "I really thought I'd bollocksed the whole thing well before. But I love you a great deal and last ditch efforts are the only ones worth risking when you're in love, so I asked. And then you said yes, which I wasn't expecting. I thought we'd squandered all our chances. That would be unforgivable."

Bridget had thought that, too. She's thought that loads of times. Bridget and Mark, too different, too in love, too good to be true. And maybe they are. But she isn't willing to surrender their love story without living the full-length novel from misunderstanding to revelation to 'I do.' Let the universe try prying Mark Darcy from her hands. She'll fight every step of the way to keep him.

"I don't think we could squander them. Sometimes, when we find the person who makes us everything we want to be, who inspires us to be the person we want to be, we get scared and we bungle it up, because we're worried we'll fail. But everybody fails. The failure isn't the failure; the failure is giving up. So let's agree, no matter what it takes, let's not give up on us."

He gazes at her as only he can, as if he can't quite believe she's for him. "I'd toast to that. No giving up."

"Good." She rests her head on his shoulder. His fingers brush over the back of her neck into her hair. His breath is a soft brandy-scented breeze against her temple. His cologne is heady and addicting. She nuzzles into his neck and holds onto the man who loves her as she is, with all the trimmings and madness and wobbly bits.

"You're a wise woman, Bridget Jones."

"I'm a woman in love. It just makes sense." She gets it, maybe for the first time, that feeling when you've found the person you're meant to be with. Like opposing magnets attracted, each of them whole in themselves yet inexorably drawn together. That attraction doesn't wane because obstacles stand in the way, it only weakens until they're gone. No wonder mankind has been writing love stories since the dawn of time; that's how long it lasts when it's true.

"As a man deeply, madly in love, I think you're right."

They sway peacefully until someone (Bridget's money is on Tom) swaps out the ballads playing for Kylie's latest, the sensuous _Chocolate,_ and Mark gives it up as a bad job. Bridget's friends pull her back to the floor to make a spectacle of herself with them.

"It's your party, too, Bridget," Shazza crows. "Have fun!"

But it's not just her party. She lures Mark back to the fete, where even his most buttoned-down work mates are letting their hair down to dance, with all kinds of whispered promises that are better left between Bridget and her future mister, thank you very much. Mark grudgingly, flush-faced and slightly warm under the collar, follows. He's a bit helpless for filthy Bridget.

She plasters her back against Mark's chest and guides his arms around her waist. She gives him a minute to get comfortable with the melody, but this time she leads, rolling her shoulders to the beat until he gets the idea and brushes his lips against the shell of her ear. _Now he's got it._

He glides his fingers over her ribs as her hips swing and she raises her arms in the air. He lays a trail of possessive kisses down the side of her neck. Her eyes slip shut while his hands slip under her blouse to rest on her stomach.. He really isn't much of a dancer, his feet are planted to the floor; it's his hands that are all motion on her skin. Mark would never permit such a display with the world watching, but when everyone else is likewise occupied, he dares. Repressed? Perhaps. Indifferent? Never.

Bridget lets the music wash over her and they lose themselves in their own little world right there on the floor. It's all very sweaty, kissy, and undignified. It may be the best night of their life together so far.

But the best is yet to come.


End file.
